Tucker Carlson: The Populist Paladin of Primetime

When the host of the Fox News program “Tucker Carlson Tonight” visits his son at the University of Virginia, he leaves his bosky neighborhood off Foxhall Road in Washington, D.C., drives through Georgetown, crosses the Key Bridge, and enters Virginia. Eventually he picks up U.S. Route 29 towards Charlottesville, rolling through Prince William County, which is largely rural, dotted with small towns. “My neighborhood in Washington is great,” says Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson. “We have wonderful neighbors, and we love it. And what’s not to love? Our neighborhood looks exactly like it did in 1955. But when you get past Arlington, those small towns look nothing like they did even 15 years ago. They’re unrecognizable, especially to people who grew up there.”

The things Carlson loves about his leafy Washington neighborhood—the safety, security, and sense of community—have been “utterly destroyed in these small towns,” he says. “Jobs have vanished. The standard of living has gone down. Even the life expectancy of people in these areas of America is going down. And this is the terrible part: No one in Washington cares. The middle class in this country is collapsing and the people who live where I live—who are part of permanent Washington and make policy—don’t even care.” This isn’t because they lack empathy, says Carlson, but because they are never touched by the problems faced by Americans who live in these towns. “My neighbors,” he says, “never have to deal with the problems caused by the policies they set for the rest of America.”

Tucker Carlson’s comfortable neighbors are a mere subset of the American elites who, night after night, trigger his amused if often acidic scorn. As the most prominent of the new hosts in Fox’s re-jiggered evening lineup (after the departure of Bill O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly, and Greta Van Susteren), Carlson has established himself as a distinctive voice of a conservatism struggling to redefine itself and find its footing in the Age of Trump. And his heady brew of ideological certitude and brash showmanship seems to be working. At the beginning of the year, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” averaged 2.7 million viewers a night, says Nielsen Media Research, beating CNN’s Anderson Cooper and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and making the show number one in their enviable 8 p.m. time slot.

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Carlson avoids both O’Reilly’s hokeyness and Hannity’s pro-Trump histrionics, instead drawing on his own strength as rapid-fire commentator and relentless interrogator—that rare Grand Inquisitor with a boisterous sense of humor. Besides the obvious entertainment value, what’s also worth following is how Carlson’s own birthright conservatism (he says he has never gone through a “liberal phase”) is a work in progress. He’s increasingly willing—sometimes eager—to challenge positions sacrosanct to the Republican right, especially to neoconservatives. He drives neocons crazy, for example, with his opposition to the overseas militarism they support and with his skepticism about their fixation on the “Russian threat.” That he is perfectly willing to irk the orthodox was on display at the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference when he dared suggest that the New York Times, while liberal, is also a paper “that actually cares about accuracy.” Boos followed, but he remained unfazed, lecturing his audience about how conservatives should care about getting their facts right, too.

He remains well within the ideological tent on many red meat controversies of the day, however, particularly on immigration, which he considers a factor in the troubling condition of many rural communities. It isn’t the only factor, certainly, but it particularly animates Carlson these days. When Trump outraged polite society with his crude characterization of Haiti and African countries, Carlson countered that “almost every single person in America” in fact agrees with the president. “An awful lot of immigrants come to this country from other places that aren’t very nice,” he said. “Those places are dangerous. They’re dirty, they’re corrupt, and they’re poor, and that’s the main reason those immigrants are trying to come here, and you would too if you lived there.”

As for the idea that “diversity is our strength,” Carlson lit into Sen. Lindsey Graham for saying that America is “an idea, not defined by its people.” This claim, Carlson said, might surprise the people who already live here, “with their actual families and towns and traditions and history and customs.” It might also come as a surprise that “they’re irrelevant to the success or failure of what they imagined was their country.” If diversity is our strength, it must follow that “the less we have in common somehow the stronger we are. Is that true? We better hope it’s true because we’re betting everything on it.”

In his attitudes toward “diversity,” Carlson considers Graham not much different from his Northwest Washington neighbors. “My neighbors,” he says, “don’t understand why it is not a good idea to keep ‘welcoming’ untold thousands of low-income, poorly educated immigrants whose wage expectations are lower than those of Americans who are already here and are struggling to keep their jobs.” Who is hurt most, he asks, by this competition for jobs? His answer: “Americans who are themselves poorly educated—especially, I might add, African-Americans.” Organized labor, a pillar of the Democratic Party for decades, always seemed to understand this. Bill Clinton—“the last Democrat to recognize this problem and speak to the middle class”—also understood it. “So why can’t my neighbors?”

Carlson pauses, tosses another piece of Nicorette gum into his mouth, and laughs. It’s not a bitter laugh, but one of seeming disbelief. While he can be abrupt and sometimes even brutal with guests on his nightly program, one-on-one he’s good humored and ebullient. He’s that way, according to those who know him, even during breaks with on-air guests he is about to behead. He is exceedingly pleasant company for a leisurely lunch at swank Bistro Bis near the Fox headquarters, within walking distance of the U.S. Capitol. (The former smoker orders a plate of cheeses, which seem not to interfere with the gum, which he says both “sharpens the intellect and calms you down at the same time. It’s great.”) His own office, with the kind of framed political memorabilia de rigueur in Washington, looks out on Union Station. His desk is spacious and well-worn; he likes to tell people “it was Millard Fillmore’s,” which is the kind of joke also de rigueur in Washington.

“I have a good life,” he says. The pay is good, and there was a time he could not have afforded a sizeable house in Northwest Washington. After college, for example, he worked on the editorial staff of the now-defunct Policy Review, then owned by the Heritage Foundation. He also paid his dues as a reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock and, after that, The Weekly Standard. Back then, of course, he could not have afforded the five-bedroom, six-and-a-half-bath, 7,400-square-foot house he bought last July (purchase price: $3.895 million).

He likes his new neighbors—and the nearby dog park. “My neighbors are intelligent and thoughtful people,” he says, most of whom still have Obama stickers on their Priuses. “They think Trump is awful on immigration, and they don’t see how anyone could possibly view the issue any differently. But that’s because there is only one way that the issue touches them in their lives, and that is in terms of their household help. They worry about ‘Margarita who has been with our family for years and the kids love her and we just want to know that she will be protected.’ They aren’t cynical. They really care about the legal status of their household help. I get that. They just don’t see the issue in any larger social context.”

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There is some irony here, given Carlson’s family background. The son of a former president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, director of Voice of America, and ambassador to the African island republic of the Seychelles, this “primetime populist,” as The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins calls him, is clearly a child of privilege. While he no longer sports bow-ties, he looks the part, with that well-scrubbedness we associate with boarding schools. (He went to St. George’s in Middletown, Rhode Island.) On his mother’s side, he is a descendant of St. George Tucker of Bermuda and Williamsburg, who straddled the 18th and 19th centuries, served as one of the first law professors at the College of William and Mary, and was stepfather of the acerbic Virginia Congressman John Randolph of Roanoke. “They thought of naming me St. George Tucker Carlson,” he says. His stepmother is a Swanson frozen-food heiress and niece of Senator J. William Fulbright.

Though Carlson sees the irony, he’s untroubled by it. “I grew up in the world I’m describing,” he acknowledges. “I grew up in Georgetown. I know the way these people think. Look, there are very few poorly educated Honduran talk show hosts who are out to take my job.”

Actually, there aren’t a lot of well-educated, native-born Ivy Leaguers who pose much of a threat, either, given his current audience ratings. But Carlson knows from personal experience that the world he inhabits can be fickle. He has bounced around on cable news programs since 2000, when he went to work for CNN. In 2005, the channel cancelled his show, “Crossfire,” and he was hired by MSNBC, where he hosted “Tucker,” also dropped in 2008. Fox picked him up as a news contributor and eventually hired him as co-host of “Fox & Friends.” “Tucker Carlson Tonight” debuted in November 2016. (“Sooner or later,” he writes in his breezy 2003 memoir of his cable career, Politicians, Partisans, and Parasites, “just about everyone in television gets canned, usually without warning.”)

Kelefa Sanneh writes in The New Yorker that Carlson has been doing cable news “for far too long to be considered a rising star,” though he still seems like something of a fresh face. Liberals of course can’t stand him—and aren’t likely to notice how his views have been changing. “I’m probably more liberal right now than I’ve ever been,” he says. In prep school and at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, he considered the arrival of The American Spectator and Commentary “thrilling.” For years he read those magazines “cover to cover,” he says. “They were great, especially the Spectator, which had such spirit and published writers like P.J. O’Rourke and Andrew Ferguson. It’s depressing to see how far both those once-great magazines have fallen.”

Though Carlson supported the Iraq War when Bush initiated it, he later denounced it as “a total nightmare and a disaster, and I’m ashamed I went against my own instincts in supporting it. I’ll never do it again. Never.” He has also developed a contempt for much of neocon foreign policy—and for some of its chief proponents. Back in July, a guest on his show was Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations, who once suggested that the troubled lands of Islam “cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.”

When Carlson told Boot that it was folly for the United States to have tried to oust Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and that neocons (and Democrats) are wildly exaggerating the Russian threat, Boot accused Carlson of being a “cheerleader” for Russia, which Carlson called “grotesque.” Boot professed indignation that Carlson was “yukking it up over the fact that Putin is interfering and meddling in our election process,” and Carlson called it “odd coming from you, who really has been consistently wrong in the most flagrant and flamboyant way for over a decade.”

Boot, who can take care of himself, held his own in the exchange, but some hapless “guests” find themselves in a mismatch. Carlson, who seems only too happy to press his advantage, can come off as a bit of a bully, especially when he bursts into derisive laughter. “To me, it’s just cringe-making,” Ferguson, now with The Weekly Standard, told The New Yorker. “You get some poor little columnist from the Daily Oregonian who said Trump was Hitler, and you beat the shit out of him for ten minutes.”

Maybe so, but as the self-styled “sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink,” Carlson deploys his well-honed tools of debate in a cause that many consider valuable, even indispensable—especially in calling out the agents of foreign policy adventurism. Peter Beinart, late of The New Republic, anticipated something conservatives have yet to address but might need to soon. “In his vicious and ad hominem way,” wrote Beinart in The Atlantic, “Carlson is doing something extraordinary: He’s challenging the Republican Party’s hawkish orthodoxy in ways anti-war progressives have been begging cable hosts to do for years [wading into] a debate between the two strands of thinking that have dominated conservative foreign policy for roughly a century.” These two strands, presumably, are the long-dominant hawks and the still outnumbered non-interventionists troubled by the expansion of federal power that goes with those who seem to favor one war after another—often fought simultaneously all over the globe.

This raises a question: Can you be a conservative if you don’t embrace foreign policy interventionism? “Look,’’ Carlson says, “if Bill Kristol is a conservative, I am not.” Further, he suggests he actually isn’t much of a conservative on some economic issues either. “I do not favor cutting tax rates for corporations, and I do not favor invading Iran,” he says. Sometimes, he adds, “the hard left is correct. The biggest problem this country faces is income inequality, and neither the liberals nor the conservatives see it. There is a great social volatility that goes with inequality like we have now. Inequality will work under a dictatorship, maybe, but it does not work in a democracy. It is dangerous in a democracy. In a democracy, when there is inequality like this, the people will rise up and punish their elected representatives.”

In fact, they did rise up, says Carlson, when they elected Trump in 2016. “There was no mystery to why Trump won. He was the only candidate speaking to the collapsing middle class. Conservatives do not understand the social consequences of economic inequality.”

Carlson rarely leaves Democrats out of his sights for long, however. Yes, he will go after neocons, but he still directs plenty of firepower at the opposition party, which has only recently come to fear Russia as our “enemy” and uses this perceived threat to undermine President Trump. “Democrats cannot accept the fact that Trump is the president, so they have to find ways to tell themselves he really didn’t win the election,” Carlson says. “First, it was James Comey’s fault. Now it is the Russians with their ‘collusion.’ The same crowd that for years made excuses for Stalin, now that the Soviet threat no longer exists, has decided that Russia is our ‘great enemy.’ The same people who for years were highly distrustful of the FBI and the intelligence agencies now accept on faith whatever comes out of them. It’s a good thing Frank Church is no longer alive to see this.”

Carlson’s skeptical view of U.S. policy in the Middle East can be traced, at least in part, to 2006, which was a strange year in Carlson’s life. That fall, he appeared on ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” and was the first contestant to be eliminated. (Even Jerry Springer did better.) In Carlson’s defense, he was also doing his nightly MSNBC show “Tucker” at the time and had to miss his dancing classes because he was on assignment in Israel and Lebanon during the war between Israel and Hezbollah. While there, he also was the host of an MSNBC Special Report called “Mideast Crisis.”

It is not clear what he learned on “Dancing with the Stars,” but he learned a great deal, he says, in the Middle East. “First, the closer you get to any situation, at least in terms of these wars, the more confusing and complicated things are,” he says. “Second, the consequences of your actions are never predictable.” The United States toppled the Afghan government in 2001, “and 16 years and $1 trillion later, what do we have to show for it?” American diplomats, he reports, can’t even drive the two miles from the airport in Kabul to our embassy because it’s unsafe. “They have to take helicopters.”

Carlson says that the rise of the brutal Islamists of ISIS was a direct result of the Iraq War, a clear example of the law of unintended consequences. “When you think about it,” he says, “we are still suffering from the ill effects of World War I. The Austro-Hungarian archduke is assassinated, and the world is still feeling the effects. There are unforeseen consequences of any of these actions.”

This concern about consequences sounds eminently conservative, even if a lot of conservatives don’t want to hear it. Like their liberal counterparts, many neoconservatives have fallen under the spell of what Carlson considers the maddening optimism of the American people—the view that we can take any situation around the world and improve it. “Something else you learn in the Middle East is that there are some really crummy places in the world,” Carlson says, adding that Americans viewed Iraq’s Saddam Hussein as such an evil leader that, no matter what followed, his overthrow would have to be an improvement. “Well, that is naïve,” he says. “Things can always get worse. But Americans don’t want to believe that, because we lack imagination and we want to help. And as for toppling dictatorships, we don’t seem to realize that there’s something worse than a dictatorship—and that’s anarchy. Because with anarchy, there can be a dictator in any neighborhood: anybody with an AK-47.”

♦♦♦

Is Carlson oblivious to the threats confronting America and its allies? He doesn’t think so, even if Boot and other neocons might make that claim. “Am I concerned about North Korea?” he asks. “Am I concerned about Iran? Let’s put it this way. I am concerned about North Korea. I am concerned about Iran, but I am also concerned about Pakistan as a nuclear power. I’m concerned about a lot of things.” When he hears that Iran is the number one sponsor of terrorism in the world, he asks how many Americans have been killed as a result of Iran-sponsored terrorism. Carlson’s answer: “In the neighborhood of none, that’s how many.”

If Carlson’s skepticism about the Iranian threat is still a minority view in Washington, he is used to having unpopular opinions. He seems comfortable taking on the establishment, as he defines it, whether the subject is Iran, Russia, immigration, or trade—or Trump. When asked what he thinks of Steve Bannon, the president’s erstwhile chief strategist who also deals in controversy, Carlson replies, “I don’t think Bannon fully understands the ideas he espouses.” But he adds: “I will say this for him: He has been brave enough to say that the people in charge in Washington don’t know what they are doing, with respect to Iran and a lot else.” The people making the decisions these days are the equivalent of day traders, “making it up as they go,” Carlson says. “The private equity model is not good for the economy, and it is not good for the government or the American people. It’s too shortsighted.”

Like millions of other Americans, Carlson worries about the current administration, though not necessarily for the same reasons. “My concern is that Trump is actually weaker than most people realize,” he says. “I don’t worry about the people who go on TV and say Trump is a ‘racist’ and a ‘fascist’ and all that. They have no effect on the administration. The worry for me is the people who want to use Trump as a host to do things they want, like a war with Iran.” Many of the people who advocated the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s government, which posed the one real counterbalance to Iran, are now calling for American ground troops in the Islamic Republic—“people like Max Boot, who calls anyone who disagrees with this idea a quisling.”

Again the law of unintended consequences comes to mind for Carlson, as does the son he drives down U.S. Route 29 to visit in Charlottesville. “I’m against those people who want a war with Iran. Those are the people who might get my 20-year-old son killed in a war in Iran. Why would I favor that?”

“They were great, especially the Spectator, which had such spirit and published writers like P.J. O’Rourke and Andrew Ferguson. It’s depressing to see how far both those once-great magazines have fallen.”
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Boon years for magazines and tabloid weeklies, Village Voice, I F Stone Biweekly, Ramparts, Harper’s and even Saturday Review were strong, and then “city magazines” and investigative journalism. I recall something on masthead of The American Spectator (tab newspaper format) re: “founded at McSorley’s Old Ale House” and its legal counsel being “Nasty, Brutish and Short” and the wit of R Emmett Tyrell in Bloomington, Indiana.

Carlson has emerged from a small bubble and moved into a slighter bigger bubble. This has an initial invigorating effect; but it only lasts until he bumps against the bigger bubble. This notion that America is a naive optimist looking to fix things but screwing up is very dear to AC conservatives. But it ain’t true. Read that famous quote by Smedley Butler and you will have it in a nutshell.

Hey, “MM” and “Scientist 880” ( hiding behind noms de plume, like so many commenters these days ). Do us all a favor and get your own blog, or exchange personal email addresses, and wage your tiresome battles elsewhere.

The Scientist 880 said:
“Is no one going to take on the contention that Bill Buckley was a racist? It’s been quiet here on that.”

Well, since you are so blatantly TROLLING for a response, here it is:

I do not feel the need to respond to every thatched idiot who wants to provoke a fight. If you want to think Buckley was a racist, go ahead. It’s YOUR ignorance on display. I have no need to argue with smug foolishness.

You bill yourself as “The Scientist”. OK. Now when you play the Smart Card, you ought be aware there may be people in the room smarter and more knowledgeable than yourself. Shucks, I understand that. I was a Sophomore myself once. But it doesn’t come off well to be seen as a) provoking, and b)evading criticism which is from people who are also armed with facts and stats. And it is absurd to call what other people present Fake Facts as it is for Trump to call anything he doesn’t like Fake News. (Congrats — you and Prexy have something in common.)

This simplistic presumption that all Conservatives are automatically ignorant bigoted misogynic morons is touching. Now, as a relatively public forum (the moderators hereabouts are rather tolerant), there are some honest-to-Thor white nationalists who show up here from time to time. They usually get put down by the Conservatives, but that doesn’t stop them from coming back (Zombie Nazi Surf Ninjas From The Black Lagoon). If you really want a good sweaty-righteous knock-down, wait for them to show up, and provoke them into a manly bout of fisticuffs. You guys deserve each other.

Now, please don’t get emotionally distraught if I don’t have anything more to say to you. I’ve said all I am going to say… to you.

Note to African-Americans, you will always be last on the totem pole, whether your masters be white or yellow or light brown. Our new overlords from China and India are going to hire smart whites, Indians and Chinese over African-Americans, every chance they get. Foreign language requirements, increasingly implemented in government jobs, are a great way to exclude African-Americans and non-Hispanic whites. Of course, if Blacks are just interested in revenge for atrocities committed against their ancestors, then go ahead on and laud the replacement of whites with other minorities, who, I might add qualify for Affirmative Action the minute they get an H1 visa or a green card. Ann Coulter was right when she said that Affirmative Action should be limited to Black people whose ancestors were brought here against their will. People who voluntarily emigrate here, and their descendents, should not qualify for Affirmative Action.

Tucker is good at provoking thought. As a (sorta) conservative reexamining (Reaganite) conservatism as it’s been known.
Problem is, he’s very short on coherent solutions. The rightist populists generally are. If ‘the hard left is right, income inequality is the biggest problem’, what is the solution to that other than trust in bigger govt and more collectivism? Protectionism is not going to reverse inequality, the opposite if anything. Nor is immigration restriction likely to, materially. Yes, immigration is a legitimate issue, and no not everyone who wants less is a ‘racist’. But the economic as opposed to social impact of immigration is very easy to overstate.
Tucker is ultimately an example of a ‘new kind of right’ which simply lacks solutions other than those of the left. Why not just embrace the left if it’s right about the ‘main problem’ and you have not other practical solution than those of the left? Maybe a left with less ‘elitism’ and ‘snobbery’? Thought provoking but I’m not sure Tucker is really about anything other than style. It’s again a problem of the populist right generally.

“Anyway, n is the sample size. It shouldn’t matter if the population it was drawn from was is 1 million or 40 million.”

Depending in what is being measured and the understood hypothesis sample size matters. One could question the model/survey mechanism used. However, I think that makes this more complex than needed.

I suspect most blacks get without much effort that importing anyone who could compete for their slice of the bad is goi8ng to negatively impact them more than any other group. It is sad, but true. They are not going to support loosening immigration and don’t.

The opinion poll is pretty simple and it explains why one doesn’t need a degree to understand impact realities.

Sure the black population is not enamored with Pres Trump, but they understand immigration impacts. US history stares them straight in the face of every day.

I suspect if he caves as seems to have done on immigration — they will like him even less.

Christopher Hoving says: “I’m a conservative that supports Trump. I think the world of Tucker but I strongly disagree with his Google, et al., anti-lobbyist, and anti-corporate screeds. I think being a Trumpian is urging the draining of the swamp. I don’t think any of that stuff is in it. I object even more to Steve “The Next Revolution” Hilton’s assigning all blame to “rich corporations” and the like. The swamp is what Obama and Hillary supported, not the private sector, which they largely loathed.”

Yes, Obama loathed the private sector so much that he made sure virtually no bankers or Wall street titans were prosecuted, let alone sent to jail, for their part in causing the Great Recession. The GOP did a better job with the Savings & Loan scandals of the 80’s. And Obama and both Clintons so loathed the private sector that they pushed for health care reform systems whose primary goal was to protect the private health insurance industry and increase its profits. If you think corporate lobbyists and rich corporations are not part of the “swamp,” you are hopelessly naive.

I posted his own words. You haven’t even slightly interacted with his own piece. He said whites have the right to use violence to win politically when they can’t win numerically. That is old school KKK terroristic racism. Why don’t you actually engage with the man’s thoughts? It’s certainly not trolling to post a piece written by the author in 1957.

“I suspect if he caves as seems to have done on immigration — they will like him even less.”

Black people in Alabama basically voted in unison against his politician of choice Roy Moore. It’s practically impossible for blacks to like Trump less. Go talk to some yourself, don’t suspect or take my word for it. There a 90%+ chance they will hate him. Wait till November, you’ll see.

“Note to African-Americans, you will always be last on the totem pole, whether your masters be white or yellow or light brown. Our new overlords from China and India are going to hire smart whites, Indians and Chinese over African-Americans, every chance they get. Foreign language requirements, increasingly implemented in government jobs, are a great way to exclude African-Americans and non-Hispanic whites. Of course, if Blacks are just interested in revenge for atrocities committed against their ancestors, then go ahead on and laud the replacement of whites with other minorities, who, I might add qualify for Affirmative Action the minute they get an H1 visa or a green card. Ann Coulter was right when she said that Affirmative Action should be limited to Black people whose ancestors were brought here against their will. People who voluntarily emigrate here, and their descendents, should not qualify for Affirmative Action.”

Lol Michelle clearly you’ve had no substantial interaction with blacks since you can’t even make appeals to their self interest. You have no idea what might move them so you throw out a stereotype you think has power. It’s too funny. Let’s play your game. If blacks are always going to be at the bottom then why should we care if whites become a minority? No skin off our backs. Because no group will have hegemonic power, racist laws won’t be able to be implemented since Hispanics and Asians will not support a law that could be used to target them either. Sounds like a win to me. My life is better today than any of my ancestors have experienced so why would I be pessimistic? Blacks are the most optimistic about the future in America.

“Tucker is ultimately an example of a ‘new kind of right’ which simply lacks solutions other than those of the left.”

Much of the populist right are older, white folks pining for the economy of the ’50’s and ’60’s. They remember a time of rapid wage growth and an expanding standard of living.

The problem is, that economy was a direct result of leftist policies. There was strong support for labor unions at all levels of government. And during economic downturns, the federal government invested heavily in infrastructure to absorb the extra labor. Which allowed unions to remain strong. As productivity improved, the added income went into labor’s pockets, not the 1%.

That being said, as the far left took over the democratic party in the late ’60’s and turned the democratic party into supporting diversity, anti-military stances, pro-welfare and pro-abortion; working class America turned against the left.

Which gave the far right the opportunity to destroy the labor movement and the middle-class. Which they very promptly set about doing. So working class Americans now live in a dystopic economy of their own making.

When I was a kid growing up in the ’60’s and ’70’s, being a union member was the epitome of conservatism. Being a union man was expected, otherwise you were a scab. And those union men were expected to join the military, fight America’s wars, be in church on Sunday, and bring the beer to the barbeques.

That has gone away as conservativism has become synonymous with libertarian “free markets”. In order for conservatism to regain its once prestigious position, it must reject libertarianism.

Carlson is only a reasonably intelligent person who looks at the world as it is rather than how the Narrative is shaped. He is not immune from it but sees through the obvious canards. In short, he isn’t totally corrupted by the System. Anyone can see, for example, that Iran is not the chief sponsor of terrorism anymore thant the Moon is made of green cheese. It’s an utter fable as are most notions in Washington which are created and engineered by a network of apparatchniks of the Empire. Other “journalists” aren’t willing to do that–they know the Russia story, the Iran story is BS but their pay depends on them going along with the Washington Narrative.

““In the neighborhood of no” Americans killed by Iran-sponsored terrorism? Three words for you, Tucker: Improvised Explosive Device. Who do you think taught the terrorists in Iraq to make the things?”

Even though i did not support the Iraq war, I hated that Americans were killed there, of course, and that includes Americans that were killed by Shia militias by IED’s and enabled by other support from their co-religionists in Iran.

But sorry, that is not terrorism. That was on the battlefield. Terrorism is against innocent civilians. If you call that terrorism, the we are terrorists too because we supported the mujahadeen against the Soviets, as just one of many many examples.

My 2 cents on the statistical study comments – When dealing with large populations (of whatever is being sampled) the sample size as a percent can be extremely small as compared with a smaller population, and have the same level of confidence, and in fact a population size may increase by orders of magnitude and the sample size required for the same level of confidence will almost the same with very little increase. More important is to ensure that the sample is representative of the larger population.

Anyone who is willing to take on the neo-conservative consensus on national television is worthy of some respect. America’s liberal imperialism needs to end if America is ever going to make it in the 21st century.

Well, he’s definitely not acting like a scientist. More like an amateur college candidate, whom I’d never vote for.

And he’s clearly ignorant of what black Americans think about immigration, both regulated and unregulated. I didn’t even bring up Trump’s approval ratings in the community, but evidently he doesn’t think black Americans can have a negative view of the President and a positive view of certain policy proposals at the same time. Seems rather insulting, to be honest…

The 1983 Beirut barracks bombing of the U.S. Marine and French ‘Drakkar’ barracks which killed 241 American and 58 French peacekeepers. On May 30, 2003, a U.S. federal judge ruled that Hezbollah carried out the attack at the direction of the Iranian government.

The 1984 United States embassy annex bombing, killing 24 people.

The hijacking of TWA flight 847 holding the 39 Americans on board hostage for weeks in 1985 and murder of one U.S. Navy sailor.

The 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, killing 19 US servicemen. On December 22, 2006, federal judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled that Iran was responsible for the attack, stating “The totality of the evidence at trial…firmly establishes that the Khobar Towers bombing was planned, funded, and sponsored by senior leadership in the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The defendants’ conduct in facilitating, financing, and providing material support to bring about this attack was intentional, extreme, and outrageous.

On November 8, 2011, Judge John D. Bates ruled in federal court that Iran was liable for the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. In his 45-page decision, Judge Bates wrote that “Prior to their meetings with Iranian officials and agents Bin Laden and al Qaeda did not possess the technical expertise required to carry out the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.”[59]

In March 2015, U.S. federal judge Rudolph Contreras found both Iran and Sudan complicit in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole by al Qaeda, stating that “Iran was directly involved in establishing Al-Qaeda’s Yemen network and supported training and logistics for Al-Qaeda in the Gulf region” through Hezbollah.

The 9/11 Commission Report stated that 8 to 10 of the hijackers on 9/11 previously passed through Iran and their travel was facilitated by Iranian border guards.

It is hig time that Tucker Carlson developed some respect for the truth and for Americans killed by Iranian terrorism. It is high time that American Conservative apologize for not calling Carlson on his bald-faced lie.

To the anti-Carlson crew – why are we hated? Not for the Marshall Plan, making the difference in WW1 and WW2, freeing countries and leaving them better off? Pax Americana? Maybe Iraq? Maybe Supporting the illegal settlements? Maybe Rubber stamping apartheid? Maybe because we are over there at the bidding of our tyrant state without recourse to our own needs? These propagandists that rheem Tucker well know about the answer? Support your local war party agitator? or maybe suggest s/he put his/her life on the line?

” Go talk to some yourself, don’t suspect or take my word for it. There a 90%+ chance they will hate him. Wait till November, you’ll see.”

excuse the delay. It was not intentional.

While we are on opposite sides of the fence more like opposite sides of the Grand Canyon, I agree that black people are highly distrustful of or don’t like Pres Trump, and they have good reason to be.

I like Pres Trump and I support him when I can.

My point was that regardless of not liking him, they may agree that immigration is a serious impediment for them. And his ambitions of limiting immigration, and investing in infrastructure and cities are idea they would support even if they don’t like him.